It's Friday, and the pond is feeling a little light-headed. Too much time spent amongst the Murdochians?

Can the pond just start off by noting how badly James Ashby seems to have been advised by Mal Brough on at least three occasions? (Ashby's motives over Slipper allegations dubious, say lawyers).

A pity the pond's partner wasn't consulted, having dismissed an employee for sexual harassment in recent times.

So will Australia yet again become the recipient of advice from Mal Brough as he attempts to step up to Parliament one more time? Watch out Tasmania. You never know when an invasion might be considered a good idea.

Meanwhile, on a lighter note, the gnomic utterances continue:

Middle America mostly

in great shape

And spirit

Versus both coasts

Almost opposite

But with some great exceptions.

On the one hand, you might wonder who tweeted this tripe and take great exception to the blithering of a silly billy, on the other, you might not give a flying fuck.

Never mind, thank god it's Friday, and the twittering tweet stylings of Chairman Rupert provide a great send-off to the weekend (and there's more tweets here).

It also turns out that the chairman's wife is a big fan of Rita Wilson, caught by the pond crooning All I Have To Do Is Dream on YouTube).

Statutory legal notice: the pond is in no way liable for any nausea or easy listening nervous break-down induced by clicking on the provided link, and hearing a perfectly good Everly Brothers song turn into a pile of swill (sorry Tom Hanks, it's gotta be said). On the other hand, if you clicked on the thoughts of the chairman and copped the recommendation, maybe you got what you deserved.

Why that's most generous, seeing as how Universal Music is owned by Vivendi, but on the other hand, if the tone comes from the top, it's easy to to see why Murdoch land is philistine land ...

Speaking of philistines, off in Andrew Bolt la la land, the noble scribe recently penned a missive Bolt: hypocrites harm gay men and women which begins in grand fashion:

It offends me to hear someone say gays and lesbians are not normal, writes Andrew Bolt.

Bolt then spends the rest of his piece defending Professor Kurvilla George, insinuating authoritarianism, a witch-hunt, and persecutory leftists, and so on and on, while decrying the concept of gay marriage, before arriving at the heart of the matter:

As it happens, I actually agree George should have quit, but not because he's against gay marriage.
I don't think someone who declares he's against the "further 'normalising' of homosexual behaviour" should be on the board of an organisation devoted to treating people equally.

Yep, in a Doctors for the Family submission, George signed up for this, amongst other things:

We further submit that legalisation of same-sex marriage will have significant ramifications that have been confirmed by research and events here and elsewhere
• the further “normalising” of homosexual behaviour through education with all the health consequences of that behaviour for our children (you can find the submission here in pdf form)

So the pious Bolt draws himself up to denounce George while at the same time denouncing all the leftists and supporters of gay marriage who denounced George, in the process delivering this as a bon mot:

....gays are as free as anyone to marry anyone of the opposite sex.

Would the Bolter recognise a hypocrite if he bit himself on the bum?

The saddest thing of course is that he has a sister, who wrote a poignant piece published in Hoopla under the header Bolt: I want marriage equality. Presumably she's also part of the leftist conspiracy that dares to suggest gays might want to marry someone of the same sex, and indulge in a normal - some might even say ultra-conservative institution - like marriage, rather than marry someone of the opposite sex.

Sure it's possible to marvel and to wonder at the Bolter, as done here, and by Ben Pobjie here. But then I think of the Bolter's sister, and the random acts of cruelty people close to you can inflict without seemingly being aware of their righteous hypocrisy. Even Dick Cheney shows more style and class in the matter.

....gays are as free as anyone to marry anyone of the opposite sex.

Because that's the "normal" thing to do?

Obligatory statutory legal disclaimer: anyone following the links to the Bolter are on their own. Any nausea or irredeemable brain damage is the fault of anyone foolish enough to click on the links provided.

Meanwhile, the paranoid world of The Australian gets weirder and more paranoid.

They say they don't carry grudges, don't indulge in persecutions, and don't mount crusades against their mortal enemies, but if that's the case, why do they keep on keeping on about Margaret Simons?

No links, just a screen cap. We're tired of printing legal disclaimers.

Sure it's well-known that the lizard Oz hates academics - you can almost imagine a sneer and a curl of the lips as they whipped up that header "Academic defends" and snarked "downplayed revelations", about a controversy which has about as much strength as the froth on an inner west cafe latte.

It's well known that the likes of Miranda the Devine hates sandal-wearers, along with other smirking and discreetly eye-rolling hard working reporters (academics, don't ya know, aren't really working, not like working feral Murdochian reporters grafting away at the latest gotcha paranoid conspiracy fantasy).

But after all the heat and the dust and the blinding paranoid light settles, and you head off to Margaret Simons' revelations about the "revelations" here, well smack Christian Kerr down with a feather, you begin to wonder what the fuss was all about.

Front page news? Only in a castle full of paranoids wanting to maintain their paranoia and their rage.

The aggrieved consultant involved in the fuss, Denis Muller, who got a gig working for the Finkelstein inquiry, posted a short note at the end of Simons' post, which included this comical closer:

The Australian’s story also mentions that I included Dr Simons and Professor Matthew Ricketson, who assisted Mr Finkelstein, in the acknowledgements in my doctoral thesis. So I did. I also acknowledged Mr Chris McLeod, then an editorial executive at the Herald & Weekly Times, a News Limited subsidiary, for his assistance.
I don’t suppose The Australian thinks that he too is part of some bizarre conspiracy against News Limited which The Australian seems to think the rest of us are engaged in.
If The Australian was a flesh-and-blood person, you’d think it was off its medication.

Sorry Mr. Muller, the Oz went off its medication long ago, and no matter how hard the pond tries - we've hidden the meds in a milkshake, we've put the meds inside the minced meat - there's no way we can get them back on a decent dose.

Why only today they're back ranting at Wayne Swan for ignoring their class war warnings. No links, there's already too much brain damage in the world.

Perhaps it's because they get their cues and derive their tone from the sublime tweets of the immortal chairman (will he be given the full Mao Zedong mausoleum treatment?)

Now they are complaining

About R Brooks

Saving an old horse

From the glue factory

Oh yes, that's truly inspirational. How about we free base with the chairman?

UK. What's wrong?

Over educated snobs

Sneering at underclass

Supportive caring billionaires

Never sneer

Class warfare in Australia

Let Clive and Gina go free

Snobs no help to upping

Education standards

Academics to blame

Sandal wearers!

Conspiracy in Australia

Hacks at News Corp suffer

Knackery? Glue factory?

Gays can marry straights

Blessed to live in Australia

Yet they resent system

Bolt of insight from the blue

Just like television

Only you can see much further

As long as the roots aren't severed

All will be well in the garden.

Oh okay Chairman Rupert didn't write that mash-up, but what a sublime inspiration he is. We can see his vast mind at work everyday in the festering paranoia of The Australian.

And now since it's Friday, why doesn't we all do a Bob Hawke and sing along with the Everly brothers? You might have to click through to YouTube, damn you Sony, damn you to hell, but if you're old enough to be that nostalgic, you'll remember the words run something like:

Don't want your lo-o-o-o-ove anymore.
Don't want your ki-i-i-i-isses, that's for sure.
I die each time
I hear this sound:
"Here he co-o-o-o-omes. That's Rupert's clown."

Or yet another example of how the Angry Anglican dream is alive in Sydney ...

Does the hatred of women get any angrier than the current GOP war on women in the United States?

Sure thing. Just ask the Angry Sydney Anglicans for an opinion, especially Phillip Jensen scribbling furiously about The Working Mother.

Normally the pond would reserve Angry Anglican thinking for a Sunday, the day of rest and repose but this was irresistible:

Just remember a Jensen perspective is always a Christian perspective - any disagreement and a Jensenist might turn you into a pillar of stone or salt - so here's some first-rate Jensenism:

... there is a form of paid employment that is hostile to family life not just for mothers but equally for fathers. Careerism is working to find personal fulfillment and satisfaction by professional advancement. Careerism seeks value, importance, worth and significance not in our creation or redemption or relationships to God or each other, not even in our work or contribution to the welfare of society and humanity, but in our advancement and progress.

Yes indeed. That godless atheist barren unmarried careerist is the perfect example of careerism at its worst.

Without God in their lives it is understandable that people may try to create meaning and significance in personal advancement – but for the Christian this just another idolatry.

Stone her, stone the idolatress, and her pagan-worshipping false careerist gods. Idolator!

To go to work to find ourselves is a declaration of just how lost we are!

No wonder the country's lost. We've got a god-forsaken idolatress careerist at the helm. Won't someone think of the children?

Oh okay she doesn't have children, but what if she did have children?

Going to work to provide for our family does not affect children negatively.

Yes, couldn't she just have settled for a job like flipping burgers at McDonalds? You know, the sort of work that's fit and proper for a woman going out to work to provide for her family. The single mother she could have become - because after all abortion is an appalling evil - if she hadn't decided on a career as a careerist idolatress. Stone her ...

But what if she did have children?

Working for our own self-fulfilment is the danger. Children always know careerist parents undervalue them. How precisely they know, I don’t know; but that they know, I have no doubt.

Yes, it's impossible to know, but what I do know is that if Julia Gillard did have children - unwise for any careerist at the best of time - they would be undervalued. How do I know this precisely? Well I don't know, but I do know I'm right, of that I have no doubt. It's just a matter of turning known unknowns into known knowns. (We're still working on unknown unknowns).

Our children just have a better sense of our real values than we do, because they judge not by what we say, but what we do – they are not deceived by our self-deception.

Yes, that'd be the self-deception of an evil red-headed monster, a harridan, a hurtful wretched careerist showing the children of this country just how lost they are.

Quick, someone call up Tony Abbott and let him know. He's a man, but what's that you say? He's also a careerist, intent on a career as a Prime Minister? Doesn't he realise he's working to find personal fulfilment and satisfaction by professional advancement. Doesn't he realise he fits Jensenist denunciation to a T?

Careerism seeks value, importance, worth and significance not in our creation or redemption or relationships to God or each other, not even in our work or contribution to the welfare of society and humanity, but in our advancement and progress.

What's that you say? Tony Abbott imagines he's making a contribution to the welfare of society and humanity, and imagines he's in touch with his god? But isn't he a Catholic, and so in grievous error? Stone him, stone him ...

Resign Mr. Abbott, resign this veryinstant, bow your head and kneel before the Sydney Anglicans and pray for the redemption of your wretched soul.

What's that you say? He's a man, and he likes to cycle so he's allowed to pass? He's not a careerist red-head ...

Phew, that's a relief ...

Just another friendly message from your Angry Sydney Anglicans. And they wonder why they get tagged as Angry Anglicans ...

(Below: the Anglican dream might or might not be alive in Portland but damn straight it's alive and well in Sydney).

(Below: wrong GOP, you forgot those deviant careerists ruining the country).

And so on a sunny day in Sydney to sundry forms of denialism ...

(Above: Christopher Pyne).

Oh it's a glorious day in Sydney, and what fun to see the liar Christopher Pyne caught out in his lies?

Oh you say, isn't that a bit strong? Isn't it defamatory to call someone a blatant liar?

Well indeed it might, unless truth might be called to the defence, along with more than a tad of public interest, along with the evidence provided in Jessica Wright's Pyne sent aide email after drinks.

Yes, it turns out that despite ongoing denials by Pyne, he was immediately in contact with James Ashby after sharing a beer with him, and Fairfax has the smoking gun in the form of an exchange of emails. (pdf here)

How on earth did they get hold of it? Have they been spammed? Not to worry, if the pond goes down, the Herald will go down with it too.

The silliness in all this? Well what with Craig Thomson continuing to immolate himself and the Labor party with a stellar performance of denialism (the latest is Thomson says he won't name names to the police - yet), there was no need for Pyne to expose himself in this way.

But can you stop children playing in the mud? Not in the pond's experience, and the pond did in its time eat many a Tamworth-baked mud pie ...

Now it seems it'll be Pyne's turn to eat mud pie. Will Tony Abbott support a proven liar in his front bench? Of course, he's a politician, and mud - from Thomson to Pyne - is what keeps the system going ...

But enough of the liar Pyne (why that sounds infinitely better than poodle Pyne), what else has Fairfax conjured up today?

Well there's George Monblot giving the cult of Christianity a blast in Truth is the forgotten family value, proving yet again that a gay Mafia runs the Herald. Amazingly the gay haters didn't resort to the letters pages - as proposed by Fairfax reader person Judith Prisk the other day - but instead simply availed themselves of the comments section to unload their hate - in the loving way that can be expected of Christians.

Hate, hate, fear and loathing ... and did we mention unnatural? Seems like god invented the world, but was truly stuffed as an architect. Seeing as how she created the whole world and either deliberately introduced the notion of lesbianism, or simply overlooked it ...

Now mentioning architecture would on a Thursday provide a natural throw to Elizabeth Farrelly blathering on about Sydney spatiality, but today she's on an anti-popularity 'elitism is good' kick in The PC crowd that's keeping the world of art mediocre. It seems art is mediocre because of post-modernism, Barry O'Farrell's refusal to acknowledge he's an expert in architecture, and writer Tony Birch's refusal to call himself Black Caviar. Well they say a rant is cheaper than therapy, and it surely this is a first class rant, full of post-colonial London envy ...

And speaking of London should be a natural throw to Paul Sheehan scribbling about the Celtic disease of laziness that's ruining the world, but today Sheehan's target is Spain, and football - a game the pond likes to call soccer, at least until they ban head and chest and 'arm of god' balling in the game.

Spain's pain exposes the problem with putting your faith in football runs the header, and immediately it becomes painfully obvious that Sheehan went today in search of column fodder and came up short.

We learn that Sheehan has been to Barcelona, and to the Sagrada Familia thrice, but his real beef is that TV replays aren't allowed to disallow goals. Oh for the love of the long absent lord, magic water, sourdough and now manifest and avoidable injustices in soccer ... will someone either give him a red card, or let TV replays become the arbiter.

He even scribbles about how the local soccer scene is concerning. As if anyone gives a toss about the folly of billionaires ...

Meanwhile, that closeted cabal of conspiratorial scientists continue apace in their scheming to prove that humanity has a finger in recent observed changes to the world's climate.

RN was all over it this morning - well as much as you can expect RN to get excited - with a report on Melbourne University research you can listen to at Climate Research shows human-caused warming.

Oh dear, and here the pond was thinking that the Daily Terror had already dealt with this sort of fear-mongering, and unnecessary alarmism.

Well it just so happens that the pond has at the ready a sturdy stock reply on these matters:

Climate change is a deeply political issue, at least as much as it is a scientific issue.
For this reason, the latest report from the Melbourne University team led by Farquhar and Karoly must be viewed in terms of its political impact as well as using it to gauge any potential environmental dangers.
The climate activist lobby becomes frustrated when their work is judged through a political eye, arguing instead that their claims should stand separate of any such considerations.
The science, they argue, is above politics.
But considering the enormous sums of public money dedicated to climate change issues, and the potential differences that policy decisions may have on people throughout NSW, the political element of the climate debate deserves rigorous inspection.
Whether or not one is inclined to follow or dispute claims that humankind is overwhelmingly responsible for global warming, it is also worth keeping in mind the new report arrives at a time when the federal government's carbon tax is proving deeply unpopular with the electorate.
This isn't to suggest that the Melbourne University's report should be dismissed out of hand.
Far from it. The suggestion that humanity might have a hand in climate change, as depicted in the report is extremely worrying, and a complete surprise to us here in the editorial department of the Daily Terror. Who'd have thunk it?

Yet there is also reason to maintain at least some doubt over the report's more extreme predictions and alarming use of evidence from ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons.
Now there's no natural self-evident way that we can drag in Tim Flannery, because Tim Flannery isn't part of the actual Melbourne University team, but would it be wrong of us - because Tim Flannery is our very favourite piñata - to mention that those who have followed the climate debate closely will be aware that Professor Tim Flannery, the head of the Climate Commission, previously forecast that Sydney's dams might run entirely dry by 2007.
Our dams are now overflowing. Take that, ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons.
As a basic rule, we should always endeavour to care for our environment and to minimise our impact. At the same time, we should be cautious when assessing the power of that impact. We urge that all citizens read Melbourne University's report, and to proceed with care.

There, done and dusted. How dare those damned academics prop up the Labor government by issuing a report that might have taken years to compile at this very sensitive moment in the political season.

Once again the Daily Terror emerges unscathed, victorious and validated. Truly they scribble climate denialist editorials which can do service anywhere at any time.

For those who missed the joke, they can read the Daily Terror scribbling furiously about the Climate Commission report that preceded the Melbourne University report under the header Caution and care with our climate.

Yes, yes, of course, it's a cunning plan by the pond to boost the sale of emetics ...

Now how can we draw all this together, starting as we did with that well-known liar Christopher Pyne?

Could it be Pyne getting agitated about the ABC? (Aunty apologises to Pyne)

No, here's a better one. Remember when Pyne got extremely agitated about the use of the words 'denialism' and 'deniers', claiming that they should be reserved to the context of the Holocaust? (Christopher Pyne links climate change denial to the Holocaust).

Indeed. Turns out that denialism can apply to many modes of thought. Including Craig Thomson denialism about the doings of Craig Thomson, Christopher Pyne denialism about emails, Elizabeth Farrelly denialism about post-modernism, and Paul Sheehan denialism about sounding batty when scribbling about soccer ... all of them right up there with the Daily Terror's routine climate science denialism.

Oh it's a sunny day in Sydney ...

(Below: before you ask, the answer's yes. Found here).

And now to a chat about balance and poll-driven journalism ...

(Above: Chris Uhlmann).

What fun to watch Chris Uhlmann and 7.30 get done over by Media Watch, and flap and squawk about being hard done by Jonathan Holmes.

Sadly the pond sits firmly in viewer Bernie's camp:

I'd like to comment that I am unable to comment because I don't watch 7.30 anymore.

Perhaps Holmes started to feel the heat about his piece, because after several complaints about Uhlmann as presenter in the comments section, he felt compelled to add a note:

As program presenter, Chris Uhlmann would have very little input into the stories aired on the program, other than his own interviews. He would not be responsible for commissioning them, or for their detailed execution, and might not even see them before they air. So far as Media Watch is concerned this was not an item about Chris Uhlmann, whom we regard as a fair and accomplished presenter and political interviewer.

So Uhlmann's just a pretty boy show pony who fronts the cameras like all the other bubble headed blonde boobies who pretend to be journalists when all they have to do is read a cue sheet? Isn't this a job for a woman?

The 'blonde presenter', Leigh Sales, is on maternity leave and will no doubt return later this year.

Seems like it.

What a relief to discover Uhlmann is just a front of house talking head.

It seems however that Uhlmann somehow thought he was involved in the story, as he took to twitter to stand by it, as noted by Crikey here:

• “730’s story on visa fraud was much less sloppy that episode of Media Watch … In the words of Jonathan Holmes “I disagree”“
• “Some of the argument was incoherent. It seemed to boil down to “Marion Le was upset and we are too’. We stand by every word.”

And so on. Stand by your autocue and every word on it ...

Well if you want Uhlmann in depth, what better place to find him than twittering tweets at length @Chris Uhlmann.

140 characters full of insight, but sorry, the pond stands by its ban on Chris Uhlmann and 7.30.

Speaking of the media valiantly trying to engage with the new world of activist readers and viewers, the bizarre appearance of Judy Prisk in the Fairfax press with Striving for balance over gay marriage reminded the pond of another Media Watch demolition job which ran in April this year under the header The readers' friend or the paper's friend?

Back then Holmes and friends did over Prisk for being a friend of Fairfax journos, rather than performing any useful function in relation to readers and their concerns (especially their concern at having to read Peter FitzSimon's blatant ongoing self-serving self-promotional activities in the rag).

The show must have cut Prisk to the quick, because in her latest outing she takes seriously the concerns of a reader who keeps on writing letters - a dozen or so to date - about unbalanced coverage in Fairfax rags in relation to gay marriage, and quotes the demented soul thus:

''You and I know that the editors and subs on the Herald are either homosexuals or pro-homosexual and using the church as a sop to accusations of bias.''

Oh come on Prisk, that sort of level of argument makes him a prize, first-class loon. He belongs in the pond rather than being given serious attention by your august self:

''[The editors] have set up the church as the straw man, the only institution to object to homosexuality when, in fact, it was a latecomer to the argument and the original objection - that the behaviour is unnatural - remains obscured.''

Yes a rolled gold loon, and not just because (a) homosexual behaviour has been noted in other species in the natural world (and perhaps even the unnatural world), and (b) homosexual behaviour was considered natural in many societies, not least in ancient Greek and Roman circles, fonts of western civilisation, but because clearly he's a loon.

Strong stuff, and I agree with the readers that there is a big gap between the number of opinion pieces and stories which support gay marriage compared with those against it.

Strong stuff? More like stupid stuff. But it's amusing to see that Fairfax is now getting itself into the same kind of contortions involving balance as routinely perplexes the ABC.

The solution?

... the letters pages appear to give the two sides plenty of space to air their views.

The letters page (let's leave off the plural shall we). How quaint...

But back to that perplexing question of balance. How can it be achieved?

With an awareness of those leanings (an editorial and leading article in the Fairfax rags in favour of gay marriage), and the paucity of alternative pieces, the readers felt justified demanding equal time and space. But one editor argued that would not be appropriate because the community is not split down the middle. A Herald/Nielsen poll of 1400 voters in November, before the ALP conference, showed 62 per cent of voters supported legalising same-sex marriage; 31 per cent were against.

Poll-driven journalism! It seems coverage of an issue, and any position taken by the Fairfax rags should properly be determined by referencing poll results!

Given the current poll figures for the ALP, we look forward to the Fairfax rags transforming themselves into the wretched ratbag bias of The Australian and other Murdoch rags.

At the end of her piece, Prisk tries to get out of jail and offer some balance to her loon readership by offering up the opinions of Paul Sheehan!

That'd be Sheehan blathering on in his usual way about the human rights industry and the gay rights lobby and confected noise and moral outrage.

In a feeble attempt at balance on her own part, Prisk offers up a counter-balancing view from Paul McGeough in relation to Obama and changing public opinion in the United States on gay marriage, before coming to this prim conclusion:

Time will tell whether Sheehan or McGeough is right. I believe, however, that in the meantime, readers have made a case for more balance beyond the letters page.

More balance beyond the letters pages, presumably by running pieces arguing that homosexuality is unnatural, and revealing that the newspaper is being run by gays, and if not all gay, then gay friendly in the worst possible anti-church way.

Presumably the next step will be the sacking of all the gay and gay-friendly editors and subbies who run the place.

With a bit of luck the balanced Prisk is safe from this onslaught thanks to the insights in her column, but really is this a sensible response to her being chastised by Media Watch?

Back then Holmes quoted Prisk getting agitated about the readership getting agitated about the journos:

...last October she scolded readers who were convinced that for one conspiratorial reason or another, Herald journalists were deliberately deceiving them.
'Chasing moonbeams', she wrote.
...what possible benefit would news organisations gain by duping their readers, listeners and viewers?
Most base their whole ethos on their integrity, and the trust and faith placed in them.
— Sydney Morning Herald, 19th October, 2011

Holmes urged her to get a bit of mongrel in her, by way of favouring readers and their complaints. But did he mean to include rolled-gold loons?

Well now she's gone mongrel, and her response is to endorse a loon babbling on about a conspiracy of gays at the top of Fairfax, to propose poll-driven journalism, and to quote Paul Sheehan in full foaming frothing rhetorical flight ...

Dearie me, and let's throw in a lordy lordy for balance.

It sounds like a nice gig, and we mean Prisk no harm, but really in this modern social media age does Fairfax or the ABC have the first clue about how to go about balance and engaging with the mythical "ordinary person" reader?

The ABC offers fifteen minutes of Media Watch a week, and more Chris Uhlmann on a daily basis than a koala could bear, while Fairfax offers Prisk brooding about balanced reporting of unnatural sexual activities ...

It seems to the pond that there's really only one upside, and that at least there's this comical, furtive, kindergarten attempt to respond to the world. Old media are having a hard time being responsive in a way that's even remotely sensible or less than half-baked.

But at least it's in contrast to the feral world of the Murdochians, who simply lather up the readership into a fine old frenzy about the impending end of the world as we know it, thanks either to unions, the Labor party, the Greens, gays, gay whales, and all the other usual cliches and baleful stereotypes they deploy on a daily basis.

Introspection isn't a virtue admired in the head-kicking world of News Corp, which might explain why their operatives are easily baffled:

Baffled? How easily The Australian's coverage strikes the right note.

So baffling ... bewildering, bamboozling, dumbfounding, disorienting, befuddling, bemusing, confounding, dazing, disconcerting, mystifying, perplexing, and perhaps even stupefying, and as usual you can read more about it in The Guardian's media section.

Yes, yes, it's all a conspiracy of gay and gay friendly editors, but at least it offers the chance to end today with another bit of Steve Bell.

FO'D?

Quick, call Judy Prisk. There's an imbalance in the force ...

Can we please open up prattling Gerard Henderson to some competition ...

(Above: and after Pig Iron Bob came ...)

If only David Cameron had consulted the pond, he'd have known LOL stood for lots of loons, or perhaps loads of loons, or even looning out loud, not lots of love or lots of laughs, or laughing out loud, or even lots of very lickable lollipops.

That way, he could have avoided being labelled part of a GOG - gaggle of geese - who don't have the first clue.

Speaking of GOGers, today is of course the day when that honourable prattling Polonius Gerard Henderson parades his predictable pap, and he's in sharp form in Absence of competition breeds unions' contempt for members.

Hold your breath - it will be a long time before you get to read Henderson's scribble about how Absence of competition breeds Woolies' and Coles' contempt for customers, or perhaps Absence of competition breeds billionaire miners' contempt for average joes.

It turns out that Henderson is in paranoid mode, and for once it's not the fault of the public service or the ABC. It's that other handy saw, the independents, because they've insisted that Craig Thomson make some kind of explanation to parliament.

Let Polonius take up the tale:

Perhaps, in modern parlance, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Modern parlance? Well the use of parlance firmly establishes Henderson as an old fogey, but if Rosalind Fergusson's Shorter Dictionary of Catch Phrases is a reliable guide, use of the phrase "good idea at the time" goes back to the 1930s or earlier.

That's about the same vintage as "it shouldn't happen to a dog!" and is much more venerable than "it must be something he (or she) ate, which can only be tracked back to the 1950s and to a Flanders and Swann' song The Reluctant Cannibal: It must have been someone he ate.

Hang on, hang on, how did we get into a history of phrases? Oh alright, it's because of the utter tedium of reading Gerard Henderson dabbling in modern parlance.

Let's get back to the chase:

... the insistence of the independent MPs Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor that Craig Thomson deliver a statement to the House of Representatives next week could turn out to be counterproductive.

Counterproductive? Because it will reveal Thomson as delusional? Because it will land with the low thud of incredulity we saw that greeted his performance on Today with Laurie Oakes, which you can see here - but can we suggest a thrashing with a cat o' nine tails as a pleasant alternative?

It's true there's a meme going around that the Labor party, pushed to the brink, will dump the dirt on deserving Liberals, as payback, as you can read in the lizard Oz's account Liberals dismiss warnings of Craig Thomson revenge slurs. (paywall applies)

But Henderson has a different, lurid paranoid fantasy:

If the now-independent MP for Dobell uses the privileges of the House to attack his former colleagues in the Health Services Union East branch, or senior public servants in Fair Work Australia who have made findings against him, this will further discredit the Parliament.

Well that would be shocking and shameless, seeing as how the HSU East branch has been run to impeccable standards, and as they say in modern parlance is purer than the driven snow (yes, the pond believes Shakespeare is modern parlance, as in Macbeth, and Black Macbeth will seem as pure as snow, followed by The Winter's Tale usage Lawn as white as driven snow, and earlier references here).

Who will control this mendicant with his malicious tongue? Surely it should be the Labor party, which would cop another flaying if Thomson strayed out of the field of play and launched rockets at his old union colleagues or Fair Work Australia?

Don't be silly. He's no longer a Labor man, he's no longer propped up by the Labor party, he's an independent, and so it's his fellow independents who must take the blame, and uphold the standards:

Oakeshott and Windsor are invariably lecturing about parliamentary standards, even though the latter recently called Tony Abbott a ''rabid dog''. In view of the fact that the forthcoming Thomson statement was largely their initiative, they have a responsibility to ensure he does not misuse parliamentary privilege to make what might otherwise be defamatory comments.

Yes, if anything happens, it's all their fault, and if he starts going off track, the pond recommends a rugger bugger tackling of the fiend in mid-speech, followed by a sin-binning which might see Thomson held by security in a knocked-up on-site prison, while the independents lecture him about conducting standards to the level of Tony Abbott.

What's that you say? Bob Brown's bitch? Steady, it's a standard, and the gutter is a level playing field.

It has to be said that at this point, the pond began to wonder who was more delusional - Thomson or Henderson - and began to nod off, as Henderson embarked on a one-sided history of the trade union movement from way back when, superficial and biased, and all to do with a lack of competition and leadership.

Sure enough, towards the end the Communist can gets a good kicking, including the days of World War Two, and the way communist unions were involved in industrial disputes.

... successive conservative governments failed to prevent communist controlled and influenced unions from attempting to subvert the war effort during the early years of the Second World War.

Indeed. The pond was shocked and astonished to learn how that vexatious pinko pervert commie mob the Waterside Workers of Port Kembla, refused to load pig iron for shipment to Japan in 1938, just because they were then in the business of raping and looting China.

Naturally pig iron Bob and his team stood firm, and issued a withering denunciation, which you can read here:

The Australian Government has, therefore, decided that it must take steps to enforce its authority. It will, on Tuesday, 6th December, publish a notice in a special gazette under the Transport Workers' Act specifying Port Kembla as a port to which, and to Waterside Workers, at which Part 3 of the Transport Workers' Act shall apply and will also take steps to appoint a licensing officer for the port. It is giving notice in this fashion in the hope that, even at this stage, the waterside workers at Port Kembla will realise that their action, though perhaps well meant, is quite inconsistent with the principles of democratic Government.

Happily the pig iron travelled to Japan, thereby helping the war effort enormously, though perhaps it might in hindsight be a cause for wonder that it was the Japanese war effort that was helped. And the looting and raping of China proceeded apace, thanks to the man who on 10th September 1938 advised the world that he didn't see a war in Europe happening (flickr it here).

Never mind, it was actually Earle Page who did over his colleague the best when he observed that Menzies was incapable of leading the nation in war, partly because he'd been disloyal to Lyons and partly because he'd failed to serve in World War 1. (more here). Up against that kind of animus, the unions were strictly - in modern parlance - small beer (oh okay, small beer might have arisen in the middle ages to describe the third brew from the same mash drunk by children, but please remember, modern parlance really started with the Romans).

But again tedium has made the pond digress. Back to more paranoia:

It was much the same during the Vietnam War. As Paul Ham wrote in Vietnam: The Australian War, ''throughout the war, HMAS Jeparit, HMAS Boonaroo and other transport vessels faced the threat of constant delays caused by union action''.

Yes, it was those damned pesky unionists who ruined the war in Vietnam. By golly, if it hadn't been for them, there's every chance Australia and the United States would have prevailed, allowing of course for the white-anting by the ABC and public servants throughout the land. It was a just war, a war that should have been won ... (and if you believe that, please apply to the pond for a price for the Opera House we have for sale just at this minute for a knock down price).

And it goes without saying - since Henderson doesn't say it - that Sydney would be a much better place if only that bloody Jack Mundey had been stopped from applying green bans all over the place. Think how much better the world would have been if Kelly's Bush had been given a decent A. V. Jennings make-over, think how much more attractive the Rocks could have become if the entire heritage site had been demolished, and so on and on (more here).

By the end of Henderson's perambulation, the pond had nodded off, only to perk up ears at the final Henderson solution:

If governments cannot prevail against embedded union leaders, not that much can be expected from the occasional whistleblower. The best way to reform the HSU East is to open it up to genuine competition.

Which would of course make a genuine dog's breakfast of industrial relations. There would be genuine confusion and genuine chaos. Which would be genuinely pleasing to G. Henderson.

Now you might think it simpler to have an industrial body a little better prepared than Fair Work Australia that could prepare a report in shorter time than three years, and you might think if a corrupt union official is uncovered, then there are all kinds of mechanisms available to prosecute the corruption, but then that would mean you aren't Gerard Henderson, and you also probably aren't a member of the union movement or the Labor party, extending protracted benevolence in relation to a sordid mess in a bid to stay in power ...

You might also wonder why Gerard Henderson is always on hand on a Tuesday to chirp nonsense in the usual way. Indeed.

Perhaps the best way to reform the opinion page of Fairfax is to open up Henderson to genuine competition ...

(Below: oh you poor possum, if you got this far, why not a change of subject and a change of mood, thanks to the reader who sent in this encompassing definition of marriage. Click to enlarge).

Cautious good citizens, proceed with care, myrmidon Murdochians and Chris Bergian IPA'ers are coming your way ...

(Above: the Daily Terror responding to a Climate Commission report in its own inimitable front page way).

You have to admire the Daily Terror. Drawing itself up on to its righteous toes in Caution and care with our climate, the editorial delivers a truly fruity piece of advice to the citizens of Australia, in response to the latest Climate Commission report:

As a basic rule, we should always endeavour to care for our environment and to minimise our impact. At the same time, we should be cautious when assessing the power of that impact. We urge that all citizens read the commission's report, and to proceed with care.

Proceed with care? Why a kindly officer plod or a Canberra bureaucrat couldn't come up with a better form of obfuscation.

But how might we proceed with care? Is there a yellow light, officer?

Well the text that precedes the warning gives all the clues you need. First of all, there's the politics:

Climate change is a deeply political issue, at least as much as it is a scientific issue.

Yes the Daily Terror knows all about how to make it a deeply political issue, rather than soil itself with scientific concerns. Because, you see, there's the politics:

Whether or not one is inclined to follow or dispute claims that humankind is overwhelmingly responsible for global warming ....

Yes don't bother about the science, just dispute the claims ....and remember the politics:

...it is also worth keeping in mind the new report arrives at a time when the federal government's carbon tax is proving deeply unpopular with the electorate.

In any other context, this would be a form of slander or defamation in relation to the authors of the report, who are thereby characterised not as scientists, but as lick spittle lackeys doing the work of the federal Labor government.

And naturally it's the valiant Terror that sees through their fraudulent science, and their devious political manoeuvres:

...considering the enormous sums of public money dedicated to climate change issues, and the potential differences that policy decisions may have on people throughout NSW, the political element of the climate debate deserves rigorous inspection.

What's that you say? At last an examination of the deeply political behaviour of the Daily Terror and the rest of the Murdochians?

No way Jose, because you see there's the Flannery factor, the Terror's favourite straw man, and ever available piñata ripe for yet another bashing:

Those who have followed the climate debate closely will be aware that Professor Tim Flannery, the head of the commission, previously forecast that Sydney's dams might run entirely dry by 2007.
Our dams are now overflowing.

Why that settles the science, right there and then. The dams are overflowing, QED.

But what, you ask, does the holy Terror have to say about the actual report and its findings and predictions in the editorial?

Well nothing really, but why worry.

There's a report on the current Sydney weather, with the remarkable insight that recent unseasonal hot temperatures are about to disappear under winter's chill blast (Summer goes with chill blast).

And naturally there's a poll. Do you believe in climate change?

That's right, it's a belief, like any other religious superstition, and happily the Daily Terror's readers aren't mug punters who are going to fall for primitive superstitions of any kind. When last consulted, the oracle of public opinion was running 79% in favour of atheism, and only 21% of scientific religious fanatics willing to profess faith in science and the odious Flannery and so click the poll to confirm that they were indeed true simple-minded simpleton climate change true believers ...

Happily in aid of an unbiased view of the science, the Terror ended the story accompanying the poll with a quote from Bob Carter. And what do you know? He said the science was all bunkum ...

Who'd have thunk it? It's just a few hot days, and the rest is nonsense, and computer models are wrong, and in fact there's been a slight cooling.

Not that you can't take that as in any way being inclined to influence readers or the outcome of the poll, which is tremendously scientific, and insightful. It's simply a guide to the way simpletons who think there might be something to climate science are in fact simple-minded.

And naturally there's another hatchet piece on Tim Flannery, this time delivered by Gemma Jones consulting that oracle British scientist James Lovelock, now a firm Terror favourite since he's recanted his own hysteria, and found a new way to publicise himself by lending his name to Climate change alarmist warnings all hot air, says British scientist James Lovelock.

Here's Gemma Jones' notion of penetrating, probing, scientific questions:

Has Tim Flannery been discredited with all the wet weather lately? Do you still believe in man-made climate change, or is it just like Y2K for the new millennium? Tell us below.

Um Gemma, Y2K was an actual problem. People spent millions sorting it out. That's why it had a minimal impact.

Oh forget it, when you're wanting to get the punters agitated and excited, it's better to just yammer on about wet weather, the Y2K and being a believer. Climate science as the lyrics to a song by the Monkeys.

You see, scientific method isn't exactly Gemma's modus operandi. In her story linking Flannery and Lovelock, she doesn't actually bother to ask Lovelock actual questions.

Instead she rabbits on about Tim Flannery being wrong, and then shifts over to paraphrase what Lovelock told MSNBC, and then links this back to Flannery.

In the best tabloid style, she adroitly dresses this up as Lovelock dressing down Flannery. And when she runs out of quotes from Lovelock on MSNBC, she turns to Flannery praising Lovelock, on the ABC and in The Monthly, so that it's clear that the man respects the man who's denounced him ... while talking on MSNBC in a general way about climate change.

You might call it stupendously insightful journalism; others might call it lazy, suspect, malicious, devious, and running a political agenda. Seems poor Gemma couldn't get Lovelock on the phone.

Either way, it's a wondrous job of conflation and distortion, and a stark reminder that when it comes to climate change, the Terror has made it much more a political issue than a scientific one, and that readers should proceed with extreme care, and perhaps a dash of caution.

Why they might even conclude it's a vile, misleading, reprehensible, distorting rag ...

But enough with the Terror and climate science, please pardon the pond if we briefly indulge in a Bergian text for the day, published yesterday in The Age under the header Forget about the tango, it takes two to be radical.

It's Chris Berg at his finest:

... when progressives look at conservatives, they get bewildered.

Uh huh. Poor bewildered progressives.

Projecting their moral framework onto conservatives doesn't seem to explain much. So the progressives offer different explanations: conservatives must be selfish, heartless.

Uh huh. Well let's overlook the deliberately offensive and provocative use of the word "progressive" and its idle, insolent, indolent juxtaposition with the notion of conservative, and let's put it another way

Let's instead resort to an old-fashioned word. Liberal.

Projecting their moral framework onto liberals doesn't seem to explain much. So the conservatives offer different explanations: liberals must be immoral, indulgent, soft, weak, prissy, offensively lax, addle-brained and wretched.

Are we getting anywhere?

Kevin Rudd famously wrote that free market conservatives dressed greed up as economic philosophy. He might just as well have said he was completely mystified that anybody could disagree with him.

Indeed. Because it's well known that free market conservatives never dress up greed as an economic philosophy. They just let it roam about in the nude ...

Rudd could not reconcile his moral philosophy with the beliefs of others. His projection failed. And people attack what they cannot understand.

People attack what they cannot understand?!

At last an explanation of why the IPA doesn't understand climate science, and why Berg fails to understand that it was the owners of the Titanic who had the primary obligation to ensure there were sufficient lifeboats and a decent evacuation plan available for the customers on the Titanic.

When progressives look at their opponents, they don't realise the right has a different and legitimate moral framework.

Indeed. Let's put it another way:

When conservatives look at their opponents, they don't realise that liberals/the left/progressives - abuse them how you well for the slack bastards they are - have a different and legitimate moral framework.

Or some such tweedledum dweedledee twaddle. But do go on:

And when radical partisans of all stripes confront their opponents, they imagine a great political divide, and become more radical in response.
When we believe our values are the only possible ones, we make politics more hostile than it need be. We're angry not because we think we're all different, but because we think we're all alike.

Indeed. Unless of course we put it another way:

We're angry not because we think we're all alike but because we think we're all different.

Clear? Well as clear as mud perhaps on a bright autumn tabloid day ...

As usual Berg has derived his half-baked thoughts and ideas from a bit of personality and social psychology research, from which he's derived twee meaningless conclusions that suit his view of the world. Which is to accuse others of having a different view of the world, and failing to get his. Or some such thing.

Wouldn't it be simpler to shout:

North shore tossers.

Oops sorry, the pond understands that the north shore is full of suffering souls, and not mentioning their suffering is a form of class warfare.

And now the climate change people have embarked on warfare on Sydney's western suburbs, predicting all sorts of doom, gloom and future nasty weather events.

Political disagreement isn't really about politics. It is about competing worldviews; different conceptions of ethics, morality, relationships and communities.

You don't say. Could it also be about competing truisms and cliches and stereotypes? Or even banality incorporated?

... how polarised do you think Australian politics has become? Have Australians really bunkered down into bitter, warring camps on issues such as climate change and refugees.

Indeed.

Happily climate change isn't happening, or if it is, it doesn't matter what causes it, or so Berg was only recently assuring us.

But at last we can say with some certainty that thanks to the Daily Terror and the rest of the Murdoch camp and the IPA mob, Australia really has bunkered down into bitter, warring camps on the issue of climate change.

Now there's a triumph for myrmidon Murdochians and the IPA.

And perhaps Berg gets one thing right:

...the more radical your politics are, the more radical you imagine everybody else's politics to be.

Has there ever been a better evocation of the modus operandi of the IPA and the minions of Murdoch as they beaver away at climate science?

Oh sacred aunts and uncles, can there be a greater universal comedy than this?

(Below: no doubt you were wondering how The Australian, that superior tabloid, headlined its coverage. Rest easy, it seems western Sydney might have been hotter, but it's just the tarmac, and happy families can still go on picnics in the warming sun. So many upsides for climate change.

No link, in case you're tempted to fork over a gold bar to get to the science).

And so to a Sunday bagging of sundry religions and a celebration of loonism ......

(Above: thanks to anon, we start off Sunday with muscular Jesus, and plenty more Jesus portraits here).

The pond's been away from the Sydney Anglicans for some time, and now is terribly anxious.

Still no more from Michael Jensen, who seems stuck at chapter four of his Sins of Sydney septology (hmm, you only come across that word when loons talk of the Harry Potter septology. Is there hidden Sydney Anglican pagan code at work here? Is there something wrong with heptalogy?)

By golly, the pond has been off under the knife and back again, and still Jensen seems to have been stricken by the writer's block, the blank page and the empty canvas ...

On the other hand, the pond was vastly relieved that the Sydney Anglicans are Taking Jesus to all the nations, including:

... two missions in regional NSW (South Tamworth and Glen Innes) and one to Papua New Guinea.

It's well known around the world that South Tamworth is full of barbarous, primitive, dissolute people, way worse than any stray headhunter you might discover in the highlands of New Guinea. Redeem them, Sydney Anglicans, or send them to hell.

But enough of angry Anglicans. These days there seems to be a trend in high end American magazines to find a little space for Islamic studies.

In the New York Review of Books, Christopher de Bellaigue recently wrote In the Supreme Shrine (currently outside the paywall) and a cynic might well reel away from it imagining a juxtaposition of a trip to Lourdes mixed with a visit to Disneyland.

That mood grows even stronger if you read Basharat Peer's Modern Mecca The transformation of a holy city (sorry, inside The New Yorker paywall), with its casual juxtaposition of idle superstitions and hideous modern transformation of the site into a kind of up-market Cloch na Blarnan for true Islamic believers.

Anything you pray for when you first see the Kaaba is granted and fixed - eyesight, health, cancer; kissing the stone will see all the sins of mankind absorbed; the waters of Zamzam have healing properties, and so forth and etc. It's superstition central ...

There's a curiously innocent aspect to Peer's intermingling of his own pilgrimage with his description of the way the Saudis are embarking on a project to double the capacity of the circumambulation area around the Kaaba, while the very last aspects of the architectural heritage of the city of Mecca are being swept from view. Why let tradition get in the way of getting bang for the bucks and the pilgrims?

And the icing on the cake is Wendell Steavenson's Radicals Rising (sorry also behind The New Yorker paywall), which takes a look at the hard-line Islamists now on the march in Egypt.

It turns out that conservative Islamists are just like conservative Christians - not a fresh insight after a couple of thousand years of evidence, but always one worth re-visiting.

The Salafis seem to get their knickers in a knot about the right of Egyptian policemen to wear beards while bashing the bejesus out of suspects, which led to a little jocularity on the part of Steavenson:

One of the first issues the Salafis took up in parliament was the right of policemen to wear beards, despite an institutional policy against them. For Khairallah, the matter was clear. "This is a personal freedom," he said.

"So why can't I wear a bikini on a beach?" I asked. "Isn't wearing a bikini a personal freedom?"

"I am free within some restrictions," Khairallah replied carefully.

Yep, there's nothing like a little "restricted freedom" (patent pending).

It's the Republican war on women re-located to Egypt, with the Salafis adapting to the regulations requiring that political parties field female candidates ... by putting pictures of flowers instead of head shots of the female candidates on posters.

Vote one for flower power ...

And then there was the desire to re-live in Egypt all over again Prohibition and Elliot Ness and Chicago gangsters, by banning alcohol.

The pond's partner routinely visits countries run in an Islamic manner, and notes two strong trends - the routine, insidious marginalization and demonisation of women, and the underground culture of the ruling elite getting on the piss, especially when in the company of infidels and outside the purview of other true believers (unless it's a gaggle of ruling elitists happy to see everybody get pissed).

The alcohol thing is on a par with the casual misogyny you find in the United States amongst conservative Christians, including the likes of Jesse Lee Peterson:

"I think that one of the greatest mistakes America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote," Peterson said to his congregants in the 12-minute video. "We should have never turned that over to women. There are more women out there voting than men now … and these women are voting in the wrong people. They are voting in people who are evil, who agree with them, who are going to take us down this pathway of destruction."

It probably never occurs to Peterson that he is the evil one, in league with the Islamics and taking the world and women down a pathway to repression, inhibition and submission, but that's always the way with recalcitrant conservatives of a fundamentalist kind.

It's a reminder of how in the deep, dank and dark recesses of democracy there still lurk people who want to return to a theocracy, and how it's necessary to maintain the rage against cults and religions of all kinds - remembering that it's not just Islamics and Christians who are united in their desire to do harm to gay people, gay marriage, women and anyone else that doesn't fit into their set of inhibiting and punitive societal structures. Mormons think the same way too ...

You know you're in the company of such geegaws when you turn to the Pellists for the weekly message in the Sunday Terror, titled Anzac Day:

Like the majority of Australians, Catholics opposed conscription but supported the Allied War aims. Many Catholics fought and died and common suffering drew the Protestant and Catholic communities closer. Ancient wrongs and mutual antagonisms were seen in a new light and the yeast of Christian forgiveness encouraged greater tolerance.

The yeast of Christian forgiveness encouraged greater tolerance?

Religion's some kind of modern bakery? Is there a bad moon or a doughnut on the rise?

Greater tolerance? Tell that to a couple of loving gays who, in the most conservative way imaginable, want to settle down and share a life together.

Perhaps what Cardinal Pell was really thinking about was the yeast of Christian forgiveness, and a decent tribe of lawyers demanding an apology or else! Here's your yeasty Christian forgiveness, permit me to shove it where the sun don't shine. (here)

So how do you tell that you're in the company of a scoundrel, who will at any point revert to patriotism as a last refuge?

Only such a nation with deeply Christian roots who believed in redemptive sacrifice could set this Anzac failure at the heart of their legends.

Oh flay him alive Samuel Johnson.

Who'd have thought that Archbishop Mannix would in time appear a more attractive figure? Well at least in the matter of dealing with a sordid trade war that needlessly cost millions of lives ...

Remember a cardinal is just a parson by another name:

Afghanistan anyone?

But of all the bizarreness on parade during the week, perhaps the pond's favourite was Joel Hodge making The Drum seem like an outlier for rational thinking, as he scribbled Against a human-made religion: Atheism and Christianity.

There's no need to synopsise the piece - not when you can get the full saddle-leather Hunter valley red tang of the thing by reading it in full, but it seems that atheism is negative, and Christianity is against false religion, and so to a resounding finale:

We are told atheism wants to put an end to human-made religion? So does Christianity! Bring it on, we say. Let's together - atheist and Christian - purge every last vestige of false religion out of the church and the world and, if any church or world is still left, it will be entirely Christian - free from violent sacrifice and perfected in divine, gratuitous love.

Oh sweet absent megalomaniacal delusional lord, aux armes, aux armes atheists, and the world will be entirely Christian. And pray tell, will this reich last a thousand years? And can atheists go straight to heaven, as Cardinal Pell promised, without all the lovey dovey Jesus stuff?

Just one point of order Mr. Hodges. When we talk of entirely Christian, are we talking of the heretical Roman Catholics, the heretical Protestants - such an abundance of schismatics and heresies - and the heretical Mormons, the heretical Russian Orthodox, the heretical Greek Orthodox, and dozens of other sub-cults and ratbags, each gratuitously propounding their own version of divine love? Such a diverse flowering of Jesus follies ...

The pond would love to drink what they serve at St. Patrick's campus at the Australian Catholic University.

It would help when developing the philosophy and religion of loonism (TM), which will join with atheism to sweep away Christian cultism in preparation for the return of L. Ron Hubbard from the volcanoes of Mars, where he has been hibernating these past few years.

So there you have it. We think we've mentioned and dissed quite a few religions in this brief survey. There's the usual parade of angry Anglicans, angry Islamics and angry Pellists, and it seems, angry atheists who must march together with angry Christians to rid the world of other believers in imaginary friends.

Which leads us naturally to the first text of loonism (TM), which happens to involve a William Blake poem:

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

(Below: speaking of bikinis and repression, here's Bondi beach inspector Aub Laidlaw checking out an offensive item in November 1958. How he loved the bright lights and the tabloid coverage and getting to perve).